Apparently, the surprise emergence of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as a force to be reckoned with in Karachi has threatened the dominance of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), forcing its leadership to reorganise the party structure.
The Imran Khan-led PTI, which has emerged as the second largest national party, also managed to bag a considerable number of votes in Karachi, which has been the stronghold of the MQM since the last two decades.
The PTI won one National Assembly seat and three provincial assembly seats, bagging a total of 634,483 votes from all 20 NA constituencies of the commercial hub of the country.
After the MQM, which bagged 1,949,075 votes, the PTI is the second largest party in Karachi by getting over 600,000 votes. According to the election results, the PTI received almost 28 percent of the total votes in Karachi and MQM got 56 percent votes.
Interestingly, the PPP, which shared coalition government in Sindh for five years, could only manage to get 299,109 votes.
PTI leaders have been alleging the MQM of snatching PTI’s mandate in Karachi, a charge the MQM denied.
PTI Central Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mizari on Friday told Pakistan Today that the PTI had a large vote bank in Karachi, but its mandate had been stolen. “We expected to win over 10 seats. But, our mandate was stolen in Karachi. I hope the PTI will get more number of seats in the next elections. Now the people of Karachi are breaking the shackles of fear.” She said the people voted for the PTI, because they wanted to end the culture of violence.
Another PTI leader, Dr Waseem Shahzad said it was the PTI’s vote bank that had forced the MQM to reorganise its party structure in Karachi. “Now, the MQM is after the land mafia, extortionists and drug mafia,” he said, adding that in May 11 polls, the PTI had given a new vision and political awareness to the people of Karachi.
Senior MQM leader Wasay Jalil said Karachi was MQM’s stronghold. He said during the last elections, an alliance of over 10 right-wing parties, led by the PTI, had contested against the MQM, but even then MQM had clinched all seats. Jalil said the JI, not the PTI, was the real opposition party in Karachi.
The MQM leader said the PTI had managed to bad votes because the Jihad boycotted the elections, otherwise it had no standing in Karachi.
To a query, he said reorganising party structure after every election was the MQM’s tradition.
“Reorganising the party has nothing to do with the PTI… rather we decided it well before the elections that after the polls we will go for reorganising.”
He said the allegations of rigging against the MQM were baseless and shameful.
PTI Chief Imran Khan has policies and people of Pakistan trust him what he says He is a very popular leader and will do a lot for Pakistan He is not a greedy mman He will never see Anty Pakistani hurt There is no comparison of PTI with any political party Imran Khan has a vision and people of Pakistan are with Good luck PTI
Iam really very proud of Karachi people. They have seen since last 25 yrs destruction of Karachi by MQM , PPP and ANP.Now people of Karachi realised that PTI can change fortune of this city.I request people of Karachi to become FEARLESS , be UNITED against all deadly forces.Beleive me its my faith that in next election YOU will route out MQM and PPP. You will again see peacefull and prosperity in Karachi.
How funny … how come ~600000 votes = 28 percent … and … ~2000000 votes (or more than 3 times 600000 votes) = 58 percent?
Though I believe that figures could be wrong, as from Pakistan election commission site, MQM got 2510853 votes in sindh and obviously most of them were in Karachi, whereas PTI got 607383 votes in Sindh that includes all their votes in Sindh outside Karachi.
Nevertheless, if total cast votes in Karachi was ~3 million … and figures given by Kashif Abbadi is right, than MQM got ~67 percent votes and PTI got ~20 percent votes.
From PEC figures, one can say that MQM got more than 4 times votes in Sindh what PTI got.
PTI and Imran Khan Zindabad.
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